


Epilogues

by TheOriginalSuki



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22159279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOriginalSuki/pseuds/TheOriginalSuki
Summary: Rey doesn't say anything, not to Finn or Poe.  Not even to Leia and Luke's Force ghosts, who smile their name down on her in blessing.  That she carried their dead boy back with her, in her -- she wasn't aware.  He sleeps like a seed of himself, burrowed in her, pillowed in the warm and dark.Until one day he wakes up.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 96
Kudos: 271





	1. Solid, Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Let's work through our shared trauma, shall we? Enjoy and please comment! Comments literally make me write more, it is a truth universally acknowledged.

Rey doesn't say anything, not to Finn or Poe. Not even to Leia and Luke's Force ghosts, who smile their name down on her in blessing. That she carried their dead boy back with her, in her -- she wasn't aware. He sleeps like a seed of himself, burrowed in her, pillowed in the warm and dark.

Until one day he wakes up. And his silence -- until now -- makes sense.

She breathes. His presence unmistakable, haloed in a glow like starlight. He is fuzzy and drowsy. Her breath stutters, her throat constricts. A smile twitches on her lips, uncertain, before fully breaking. He is here. He didn't leave her. With the courage that conviction gives, she pushes aside want and lulls him back to sleep.

He wakes up in earnest a few days later. She feels the swell of him, like a wave on Kef Bir, like he always was. Something to drown in. There is no silencing him now.

It is good to have him with her. So good. It is also taxing.

His will even now -- especially now, in its rawness -- singes. Perhaps if she were something pure and kinetic as well, they could mingle easily, like tongues of flame. But she is still confined by temporal flesh, and his burning essence strains at her.

So she meditates.

She sends BB8 on an errand. She sits cross-legged in the abandoned homestead. His ruined tunic draped over her lap. She carefully untangles him from her and wills him to take form, for as long as she is able.

When she opens her eyes, he is there -- or is it some kind of illusion? Some trick of the Force? He sits directly in front of her, mirroring her position. Watching her. Her eyes skitter over his face. She takes inventory of his features. The jagged slope of his cheek. How his lip dips low under his nose. The subtle jaw. Black, unruly hair drawn back from his brow. Under her scrutiny his lids sink closed, lazily -- as if she's touched him with her fingertips and not her glance.

He opens his eyes again. His face is open to her, a pool she could fall into. No matter how far she leans in to seek her reflection, it draws her down, down, down.

"Hey," she says.

His speech is soft, but solid. "Hey."

A hitch in her breath; her face collapses into a teary smile. She speaks over the tremble: "I miss you."

"No need. I'm here."

But they came into being as incarnate things and this is how it should be. The beauty of their _together_ underscored and reinforced as two separate, physical creatures. There is no reason for her to explain this. He knows.

So she steels herself. Tentatively puts out a palm. It hovers before him, but doesn't close the distance. Then he puts out a palm as well. They are like two sides of a mirror, reaching for one another in strained knowledge of the glass between.

But his palm meets hers, and it is like the first and only other time. Warm and physical and realer than real.

A sobbed laugh bursts out of her. But it breaks the fragile projection of his physicality, and he is gone.


	2. Solid, Part II

Seeing his outlines thrown into light and shadow, in the desert yurt of his ancestors, the loss rips opens anew. 

At first she couldn't feel it, or didn't want to. She stuffed his discarded clothing away and left, an automaton in a wind-up universe, and flew back to Ajan Closs. Into the arms of her best friends, links in a chain, one, two, three. Relief and loss made her feel drunk. She wanted rest. She slept for two days. When she woke up she couldn't remember who or where she was, but she remembered _him_. Something compelled her to reach for him. And when she reached for him, into the place where he had been, there was solid absence. 

That was the shock more than anything; more than his being dead. Because she had him with her for so long, that his presence sewed itself beneath her skin. Now it's as though her tissue is frayed.

The tear was so sudden at first it was numb. Damaged nerves. It took time for the pain to catch up with her. It's not like she isn't used to it. She was practically weaned on loss. But she couldn't grieve, then. She had surviving to do. Always, always moving, living from one scant meal to the next. Until now.

She broke down one day lugging parts to fix the vaporators. It's not that it's hard. She's practically a pack mule, all sinew, nothing excess to her; except maybe her wrappings. And even those serve in the desert, when the temperature drops like a hyper-drive from sweltering to steel-cold. She could easily use the Force. But when she tripped and fell so magnificently, face-first into the sand, the resonance of it in the empty part of her screamed in her skull. She hugged her knees to herself and sobbed.

BB-8 rolled around her, asking what she needed. What parts, what repairs? he chirped. He could send word to Poe. She hiccuped on her breath and gave him a weak smile and a caress. Spoke to him in her soft, slow way. This is something even a droid can't fix.

The old woman wanted to know her family name. She almost answered, "Just Rey," but stopped to look at them. The people who had loved her. And she heard the echo of that wicked and unnatural terror, in her memory, but she wasn't afraid. In the consuming beam of their affection, Palpatine was nothing to her. No one. She recalled him saying, as she lay half-dead on the ground: "As I fell, so falls the last Skywalker." 

Well, not if she can help it; not as long as she breaths and bleeds. One last act of hope, and one last defiance. She made her decision. 

"Rey Skywalker," she said.

That was the moment she felt him with her.


	3. Solid, Part III

She contacts Poe and Finn back on Ajan Closs. They are bright and smiley, not the stripped-bleached bright of Jakku and Tatooine but the freshness of a mild climate and all the infinite possibilities on the horizon. As the Resistance wraps up putting down the last strongholds of the Order, talk turns to the future. A delegation of ten star systems has been arranged to meet, and Rose and Finn and Poe and the rest will be representatives, diplomats overseeing the tentative talks toward a new Republic. 

They miss her. They ask her to come back. But she knows that with the war drawing to a close, her story in this will take her elsewhere. She is the last Jedi. But she won't stay the last.

***

The second time she reaches him, it is in a dream. They are speaking somewhere, in a broad field, under a sea of stars. No other light shines, and the pale blue grass rolls and ripples, as far as the eye can see. They are talking. She does not know of what. His profile etched in starlight. He glances down and to the side, at her, and he lassos her with a slow smile. She grabs hold. Hard.

The stars recede, then drop like lead. Blackness surrounds them. It is not a dream anymore. She grasps his wrist, and he is bent over with the ferocity of her grip. He whispers, grits his teeth: "let go."

"No." She sets her face and her will against him.

"Let. _Go_."

And she feels the rips and strains through the fabric of reality, as she struggles to pull him through.

The last things she knows is his own hand, twisting around in her grasp, to clasp her back.

***

She comes back to herself in the gray ruin of the little hut before dawn. Her bed roll is hard, and she is cold. BB-8 has shut himself down for the night for repairs. She stirs, to draw her wrappings closer about her. But she presses against something solid, something large, at her back. So she turns slowly, and -- _oh_! He is closer than he has ever been before, crowding her entire vision, pulsing chaos and waves of vital, living energy. Asleep.

She trembles. Holds her breath. Aware that any sudden move could snap him from her, brittle as foliage.

But in the morning, when the first sun of Tatooine rolls onto the horizon, he is still there.

BB-8 chirps awake and Ben stirs. Rey lies, still as space. When his eyes open and settle on her they swallow the light in the small room. They are alive with dark. He swallows, licks his lips slowly, tries a cracking voice: "You didn't let go."

And Rey's own smile breaks into a thousand little brilliant pieces, before she reaches out and settles her palm to the side of his face. "Neither did you."


	4. Solid, Part IV

The first day, she won't let him get out of bed. She walks around the one-room home with her eyes glued to him. When he stirs, she says, "Stay!" and he obediently stills.

She feels his internal churning, even as he is physically weak; his questions and uncertainty, his fatigue and relief, but the conflict is all but gone. All that is left of it is a fluttering hesitance, regarding her. A painful want hovering about her shape, without penetration. Like he doesn't want to violate her. She wants to reassure him but her loss and her fear are still so near. She can barely make sense of the mire of her own feelings.

When she can comfortably wear the confidence that he is not going to disappear, she lets him up and out into the wide-open night. The condensation of the day's heat chills him, and he shivers; though she has wrapped him in layer upon layer of rags and blankets. She builds a fire over which she scrapes together a modest meal. While it cooks, she brings him his clothes -- the ones she saved from Exogol. He only pauses a moment at this revelation, understanding clicking into place. Rey turns around to allow him to dress.

They eat. Ben takes a hesitant bite, then descends on his food. Rey watches him, and when his spoon scrapes the bowl, she pours her own rations from hers into his. 

She puts him back to bed, cocooning him so that he can hardly move; he let's her do what she needs to, resigned to his fate at her hands. She lies next to him on the shabby bedding. They face each other. She puts out her hand between them, and he grabs it fast, adjusting his grasp -- as though her fist is a bird he is afraid will fly away.

She says, "Sleep."

His throat bobs. "I don't want to close my eyes."

_Why?_

_I'm afraid you won't be here when I open them again._

Through the mire of all she feels and knows, one solid certainty breaks through.

_I'll be here._

***

When he wakes both suns have risen ahead of him. They stream their repressive heat into the homestead. Rey is not there. He kicks off the covers, and a panic ripples from off of him, invisible as sound. It bounces and reverberates off of something: her. She gives off an answering acknowledgement, a reassurance.

He ducks outside, squinting, to see Rey. She speaks with an old woman in familiar tones. His sudden appearance startles the woman, who's eyes jump to him, and she asks, "Who is that stranger?"

Rey gives him a little mental tug, as of possession. "He's not a stranger," she says. "He's--"

There is a moment during which what passes between them is inarticulable. How do you put a name to what they are to one another?

"He's--" Rey pries her eyes away from him and to her neighbour "--my husband." As she says it she knows it is right.

When she looks at him again, his whole being is an organ, exposed and vulnerable. She gives the slightest of nods. And his face sets, but it is not hard, only grounded and safe. Like she has given him back to himself.

He tries his voice, hesitant then firm. Everything in him leans into his wholehearted affirmation. "I am. I'm hers."


	5. Solid, Part V

They rebuild each other like they repair the moisture farm: together, piece by piece

Their days are lazy and unstructured, punctured by flurries of motion and progress. They fall asleep facing one other so that they are the last thing the other sees when they close their eyes. They wake in the early morning, bodies drawn near in sleep. They eat together and work together; bent over tools in the sand pit; cleaning scavenged parts, tending BB-8, pouring over Rey's scrolls -- "listen to this," she says, and reads aloud a verse to him while he chops a greenish root vegetable. She mends his clothing, cuts his hair. They practice forms sometimes; Ben corrects her stance -- everything is natural, easy, but he is still hesitant to touch her. She understands this is because, for so long, he has only known how to hurt, and be hurt.

Their home comes together around them, as of its own volition. Each have their little ways, their own rhythms. Rey is very much the orphaned scavenger; she collects small things, bits and baubles. Items for which only she can discern the significance. A feather, a piece of string. Ben is almost austere in his attitude to worldly possessions. He moves along behind, within a respectful distance of time and space, and straightens, tidies up, puts away.

Rey grows secure with letting him wander out of sight. Sometimes he goes out in the desert, and over the bond she tries to give him his privacy. He is perfectly capable of looking after himself. Every now and then they will check in with one another. And he is always back in the morning. Only once did he get into trouble, a run-in with a womp rat during a sand storm. But she passed him her lightsaber and he got away. He gave it back immediately, as if he didn't trust himself with it.

She is not afraid of his anger anymore. It is a part of him, and as such she accepts it. He has a lot to work through, a lot she doesn't fully understand. She perceives it as the dim and fractured parts of a kaleidoscope, the mosaic that makes him who he is.

After a particularly taxing day, blown to the seams with frustrations, they finally get things working. The two needles blink on and hum. BB-8 busies himself checking that all the systems run correctly. They have succeeded in resurrecting the vaporators after countless tries. After what they've been through, this most recent success feels so raw, so hard-won. They turn to one another, gratuitously grinning, and Rey launches herself into his arms, wrapping her body around his middle. He catches her, and before she can think she kisses him emphatically on the mouth.

They freeze, on the brink of something. Now they are looking at each other, through each other, their attraction laid open and bare, and it is too late. They crash together, two astral bodies. The Force/force between them stronger than gravity. 

They experience it like synesthesia; the inside things and the outside things blur boundaries, and this is why they needed to be corporeal, of course, for the consummation of coming together, as though in defiance of matter. Like everything about them it is neither here nor there but both at once, carnal and intensely spiritual. 

He holds her face in his hands, holds it against his face. Rey doesn't know why she is crying. She has never been so whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm about to wrap-up this storyline. Especially as I can't force the use the word "solid" any more in the narrative, ha!


	6. Solid, Part VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating changed to M for tasteful intimacy.

With the vaporators working, things go more smoothly. More water means more food. More food means more leisure, and more leisure, more life.

More life, in more ways than one. They have a surplus they can afford to sell. Ben starts to bring back plants: tremulous, green, growing things he must have bargained hard for. Plants are kept on Tatooine for their utility, not for beauty. So these plants are doubly valuable. 

He doesn't have to say that they are for her. Though he _does_ have to tell her, "They're not for eating," as she tries surreptitiously to remove a waxy leaf from her mouth. (He's definitely _not_ laughing at her!) He tucks them around out of the sun, prunes back their growth. Even now, he catches Rey off guard -- his profound capacity for nurture.

On an afternoon, Ben follows the sound of her laughter. From around the doorway he sees her in a corner of their house, speaking with BB-8. Only it is not BB-8. It is them.

"Rey," says the voice of the erstwhile stormtrooper. "When are you coming back? It can't be good for you to be all alone."

Ben turns his body and mind away from the conversation -- he feels this is private -- before he hears her answer. "But I'm not alone," she says cryptically. She won't say any more.

***

Rey finds him in the neon bath of sunset, looking out over the sand. She lowers herself to sit next to him on a smoothed-over rock, locking him with her eyes, but his fix elsewhere.

"What is it?"

A pause. Then, gently, "You should go back to them. You don't belong here."

She gnaws the inside of her cheek. Once, she might have taken this as rejection. But she can read him too well now. "I belong wherever you are." Even, goes the unspoken, in self-imposed exile.

When he looks at her finally, she is radiant for him with affirmation. He thinks, not even the suns can glow for him how she can.

He sinks forward, a tree felled in slow motion. She curves the bow of body over him, opening like a bowl, and his face turns into her lap. From where he sprawls he says, voice full of tears, "I don't know if I can ever go back."

She bends low over him, her body a cradle. "It doesn't matter," slow and soft and clear. She strokes his hair.

***

Later they wash away the sand -- a luxury their surplus harvest brings. This is achieved by sitting in a large barrel and pouring out measured jugs of water into a shallow bath. Rey goes first because she gets cold fast. Ben pours for her, and she splashes the water, a bit here, a bit there, then darts out, wrapping herself in a length of cloth. Now it is his turn. He is rather too large to sit in a barrel, over-sized or no. Knees drawn up nearly to his chest, he grips the curved sides, shoulders tensed in anticipation. Rey dumps the final water jug directly over his hair. When he shakes the drops from his shaggy head, she thinks, fondly, he looks rather like a wookie.

***

If Rey felt ravaged with the incorporeal Ben inside her -- it is nothing like being bodily connected to him.

When they break apart, he falls on his back, next to her on the bedroll, allowing their bodies to breathe as well as their lungs. Perspiration dries on them, cooling their skin. He steals a glance at her. "You okay?"

She nods. He turns to his side, propping his head up with his elbow. She can feel him unfolding a question in the dark.

"It's like ... " she closes her eyes, inhales through her nose, " ... breathing underwater."

He supposes that will have to do.

"What's it like for you?"

He's caught off guard. "It's ... _right_ ," he settles.

She digests this then shifts toward him. And -- why does he bother to hide his flushing face in the pillow? Despite the dark, Rey must feel every inch of his fluster. Asking him, "Can we do it again?"

"G-give me a minute."


	7. Solid, Part VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really short and I'm not sure of it but I need some kind of interaction to spur me to continue. So, we'll see.

Red sparks and heat oppress him. Ragged breaths reverberate in the closed space of his own head. His lightsaber slashes, a scar in the dark. The taste of ash and bile in his mouth. Han Solo, dead.

Ben starts awake in the cool and blue, but the fever of nightmare clings to him. She lies there on his peripheral, an oasis in the desert of pain. He reaches for Rey in the dark, desperate. He is an open wound, and he needs her, to suck the poison out of him. (They don't so much make _love_ as they make _whole_.) She doesn't deny him.

He wills himself to fully open; to shuck off the ego in dead strips of skin-- not Kylo Ren, not even Ben -- but pure reception, a raw nerve exposed to all she is. And to his surprise, he has not let _her_ in -- but _himself_ out. He examines her words again and understands them. "It's like breathing underwater," she said. Of course. He's drowning to life.

In the morning she presses him back on their humble bedroll and shows him again.

***

They spar of an evening when the suns go down and the sands cool. 

Ben moves, wide, circular, like a planet on a celestial pivot. Rey, on the contrary, is precise and darting. Local where he is vast. Everything gets smaller and more compact, down to the scrunch of her nose. It leaves him open to bursts of attacks with the training staff, but even so -- she has bested him far too many times tonight. It is not like him, to go easy on her -- well. That is not precisely true. When they fought in earnest in the past, with real intention to harm, a restraint crackled off of him like static. 

Rey knows that under his exacting instruction they have grown apart in technique, even as they influence each other. That's the way things are with Ben. He shows her to herself.

When she points the tip of her staff at his throat for the fourth time in a row, she's convicted. Something is bothering him. They circle around each other in the shadows cast by moonlight, and she curls her consciousness out toward him, reaching, but he withdrawals. She lets it be.

***

When Finn comes to find her, they have been expecting him. 


	8. Solid, Part VIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tired as I am posting this, I hope there aren't too many typos. *flashes SNL Kylo Ren thumbs up sign*

Rey walks out to meet him as Finn approaches across the sand. (He couldn't quite get the landing right, even with auto-pilot, so he had to trek the half mile to get to the homestead.) Her face is such an oasis of love for him that despite thirst and fatigue, Finn breaks into a run. He lifts her right off her feet.

Then a shadow flickers in the doorway beyond her, and Finn stiffens. He sets Rey down and shoves her behind him out of instinct. The harsh lines have softened; the oppressive black clothing replaced by rough undyed fabric. Still, he is unmistakable. Kylo Ren.

Finn takes a halted step forward, but Rey grabs his hand in her firm scavenger's grasp; it takes him right back to when they first met: two times he snatched her hand, and the one time she offered him hers. He looks at her over their clasped palms. She shakes her head slowly.

***

Rey takes him inside, in the shade, and gives him water. Finn looks around the place, notes the details: potted growing things, a nest of a bedroll (only one?), broken pottery stacked on a shelf. It looks cozy, lived-in. He'd imagined a lonely, desolate existence for her but this looks almost ... nice.

"I can make tea out of these leaves, if you like," she says, fondling a plant.

"No, thank you." Finn can't imagine drinking anything warm in this oppressive heat.

He casts his glance to the imposing figure of Kylo Ren, kneeling over a sprawling palm. He packs the dirt around the roots, feels for moisture in the soil. Determines it needs more, and reaches for a small pitcher, sprinkling water on the covered roots. The gesture is absurd in its contradiction. To Finn's relief, Kylo stands, picks a linen bag from off the ground, and makes for the door.

He pauses on the threshold, turning around to meet Rey's eyes. They seem to communicate, though no words travel between them. Kylo breaks their gaze, and now his eyes land on Finn. His face lacks the tempestuous nuance that Finn has come to expect. It is pure, chilling, but not harmful -- like spring water. Finn feels as though this distant enemy is trying to lay something out between them. The foundation of a bridge, perhaps. Something that, should Finn so chose, could be built up later. Kylo nods. Leaves.

***

"So you're Force sensitive," she says. Her smile is quiet.

"I wanted to tell you myself, in person. But -- you stayed away. And you kept staying away."

The smile falters a little, but reasserts itself. She puts her hand out to cover his. "I'm sorry. It's not you. I miss you. All of you. I just. I needed a safe place to to process everything, somewhere familiar."

Finn swallows. Works his tongue behind his teeth, preparing for what he needs to say next. "So ... _him_."

Rey closes her eyes. Nods. "Him."

"What's he doing here?"

"The same thing I'm doing," she says. She opens her eyes to him. He can see that for her, it is so simple.

"He should be in custody, Rey. Tried. He's a war criminal." Finn searches her, trying to understand.

"No," she says, looking off at a distance. Finn follows her gaze. There is nothing, only middle space. She's staring into a past he can't see. "He already received the death penalty. On Exegol."

Finn doesn't understand.

"Do you remember, when you felt me fade, and you thought I must be dead?"

He nods slowly.

"Well, I was. I _died_. And he -- Ben brought me back."

Finn takes this apart. Puts it back together again. "And ... it killed him."

"Mm-hm."

"Then ... how?"

"I never told anyone. It was so very hard even for me to understand."

***

They speak for a long time. Finn has many questions. Rey answers them patiently. They prepare food, eat, and continue talking. Conversation turns to lighter things. They even laugh. The shadows grow long in the house. After a time, Rey sits back and stretches.

"Will you be staying here?" she asks him; and he has to pause to handle that question because he did not come with a clear plan. He hadn't thought very far beyond reaching her. He looks at the too-small bed.

Reading him, Rey says, "You can take the bed. Ben probably won't be back until morning, at least. I don't mind sitting up for him."

"No, that's okay. I'm -- I -- better be getting back, anyway."

He is touched by the regret creeping into her face. "I understand."

She embraces him, hard.

"Sure you won't come back with me?" he speaks into her ear.

"I will. Someday. But not now."

***

She walks him to his transport and she stays, waving him away, long after the ship has retreated into an infinite mauve atmosphere. She does not hurry home, but meanders, following the trail forged by her thoughts.

When she arrives back at the Lars homestead, Ben awaits her. Of course, he is privy to everything going on inside her, and he knew the moment she was alone again. Sometimes he leaves her to work things out. Other times, like now, his need to protect drive him near.

He sits, cross-legged in meditation, as the cool of dusk settles around them. He will let her come to him, if she needs him. So she takes her place before him and sits, as they so often do, knee to knee.

"He needs someone to train him," Ben says.

"He does -- and I _will_. In time. But I can't go. Not yet. Not for a long while yet."

He peers at her.

"There's something I have to tell you."

He waits.

"I'm pregnant."

A long silence, during which day collapses, relieved, into night.

"I know."

And the peace of the slumbering desert cracks around the sound of a hearty _thump_.

" _Ow_."

She has punched him in the arm. "You _knew_? And you didn't _tell_ me?"

He rubs the injury (she rolls her eyes because he is trying to curry sympathy). "I thought you'd prefer to figure it out yourself."

Rey thrusts her tongue into her cheek. She's hot all over. It is all she can do but to clutch the last threads of irritation. 

She is failing. "Is there anything else I should know, Ben Solo?" She leans forward, inching her mouth toward his.

He halts on a syllable, considering. Forges ahead courageously.

"It's twins."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a film-fan only. So please forgive and correct any gaping error in the world and lore. Also on tumblr as @TheOriginalSuki.


End file.
